Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Make a Difference: Keeping Up With Our Compassion Kids

Hi friends! It's Valentine's week, so everyone is thinking of those they love! A couple little people that we love are the kiddos we sponsor through Compassion. Ruth and Emerson both live in Guatemala. There's so much I wish I could give them, to show them how much we care about them, but there are pretty strict rules for what you are allowed to send with your letters. (Check out all the stuff you can and can't send your sponsored child, here.)

So although I'm trying to be more creative in what we send, I also think the best thing we can give them is consistency. Compassion makes it really easy to stay in touch with your sponsored child, because you can even just write to them online and attach a quick photo. We do this, but I also really like to send them stuff. This year I'm getting more organized and trying to send them some more interesting things. Often the thing that keeps me from getting letters in the mail is that I want to include something fun, but I don't make time to wrangle up some stickers, or print out something. So the letter sits there waiting for me to get around to the extra stuff. This year, I decided I would take a day to pick out and prepare lots of extras so they are ready to just get stapled to a letter and get on their way. Now I have a pile of fun stuff waiting in the wings and I know I will be better about getting those letters in the mail consistently. Here's some of the fun stuff we are sending with our letters:

Seek and find pages. Our kids got a subscription to Highlights magazine for Christmas, so we now have lots of fun pages to share with our sponsored kids (you can't send a whole magazine, but you can send a few pages at a time). These are great because language really isn't a barrier. I did write a little note in Spanish: "Busca estas cosas en la imagen." But if your kids speak another language, I'm sure they would still figure it out.

Stickers. All kids like stickers, right? I especially like these real life photo stickers.

Coloring pages. I made a couple of sets of coloring pages and stickers that go with them.

Valentines and Cards. Thing One wanted to include a valentine like he will give to his classmates. Although it probably won't get there until May or June, it's still fun. One of the other fun things we've sent is the musical greeting cards, yep those are allowed!

Animal pictures. Sometimes I have a hard time knowing what to write. This time wedecided to tell them about the wildlife that can be found where we live. We included a few of the animal photo stickers to show the kids what these animals look like, and asked what kind of wild animals live near them. You could also get postcards from a local tourist spot or just take pictures of animals and nature where you live.

How to draw. I used to like those step by step how to draw books. I just did a search on Pinterest and found a lot of simple how to draw pages here.

Since we have been getting letters from Ruth and Emerson for a few years now, and I also have a stack of stuff ready to send to the kids, I needed to get organized. This summer I put together a binder for each of them.

We keep our stickers/coloring pages/magazine pages/how to draw sheets in the front pocket, ready to send.

We hole-punch their letters to us and put them in the binder. This is also nice because when we want to write a letter we can look back at their most recent letter to us and remember what they said or asked.

Whenever you receive a letter from your child, Compassion also includes a blank letter and envelope for you to send to them. We keep these in the back pocket.

Hopefully being organized and thinking ahead a little bit will help us to consistently show Ruth and Emerson that we care about them and they are loved.

So are you!

Happy Valentines week!

Can you show a child that someone cares about them? Click below to visit Compassion and sponsor a child today. Some of these kids have been waiting nearly a year for someone to choose them. Maybe it's YOU they've been waiting for! : )